New: Lagavulin 7 Years / G&M Recollection / Whisky Jury

Lagavulin Jazz Festival 2022

After the 2021 Lagavulin Mezcal Cask, Lagavulin distillery will now launch two limited edition bottlings to celebrate the Islay Jazz Festival 2022.

Fans who can attend the festival in person can grab the Lagavulin 14 Year Old, taken from refill American oak casks and finished in brandy casks for five years. This cask strength expression (55.4% ABV) retails at £ 220 with 3000 bottles available.

Those at home can choose the Lagavulin 7 Year Old, available for purchase online at malts.com (now also in The Netherlands and Belgium, by the way). This is also cask strength (59.5% ABV) comes from a combination of refill and ex-bourbon hogshead casks. A total of 2490 bottles are available, retailing at £ 95 / € 120.

Gordon & MacPhail Recollection series

The Recollection series is the latest collection from Gordon & MacPhail. It is an annual series of rare single malt whiskies from closed distilleries. The first batch includes three forgotten masterpieces – later nine more casks will follow this year.

St Magdalene 39 yo 1982 (54,8%, cask #22094, 165 btl.) – £ 2250
Glen Mhor 40 yo 1982 (50,8%, cask #72, 174 btl.) – £ 2250
Lochside 40 yo 1981 (49,2%, cask #802, 141 btl.) – £ 3200

Samples are waiting on my desk. Stay tuned.

Glenrothes 1986 + Aila Col 2009 (The Whisky Jury)

The Whisky Jury announced two upcoming releases:

Glenrothes 1986 (refill hogshead #860002131, 203 btl.)
Aila Col 2009 (refill hogshead)

The Glenrothes (the oldest release to date from this bottler) is a worldwide release so allocations per retailer are really limited. The Aila Col stays in Europe so there’s a higher chance of finding bottles. Both go on sale Tuesday morning.

Octomore series 13

Bruichladdich presents the 13th batch of its Octomore single malts. The world’s most heavily peated whisky gets three new expressions, each distilled in 2016 and five years old.

13_1 Octomore: first fill American oak – 137.3 ppm
13_2 Octomore: first fill ex-Oloroso sherry – 137.3 ppm
13_3 Octomore: 100% Islay barley – first fill American + second fill European oak – 129.3 ppm

For more information and shopping info, see the Bruichladdich website or The Whisky Exchange for instance.

Also interesting

Last but not least, here are some things that may not have been widely announced but that grabbed my attention in shops recently…